Round and Yellow
by Heptagon
Summary: What is round and yellow and goes bouncing down the stairs?


**AN:** This is an old story, one of my firsts actually, written seven years ago. It was supposed to be a multi-chapter fic, but I never did get much further than the first chapter. Today I revisited this lost treasure, found it funny enough, and so, here it is - a short and (hopefully) amusing one-shot.

* * *

**Round and Yellow**

"Potty, Weasel, Mudblood," he acknowledged each of them with a malicious glare and his famous smirk.

"Get lost, Malfoy!"

"Manners, Potty. Trash like you…"

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning around he saw a girl standing in front of him, staring at him with huge round eyes. She had long dirty blond hair, necklace made of butterbeer corks and large red earrings the shape of radishes. Draco would have laughed at her appearance had she not stared at him so intently that it was not only uncomfortable but also a little intimidating.

After a couple of minutes of silent staring, she reached into her bag and took out something small and round without taking her eyes off him. Very slowly she raised her arm until it was level with his eyes and opened her palm revealing one small orange.

"Do you want an orange?" she asked.

Draco finally found his voice.

"No, thanks," he drawled. "But I'm sure Weasel would love to have it – I doubt his family has ever had enough money to afford one."

"Get lost, Malfoy," Ron said, but without the biting malice, as if the presence of the strange girl had similar impact upon him. When she next turned her attention to him, he did look somewhat flustered.

"You want it?" she asked. "Catch!"

Ron, however, made no move to catch the small round fruit that was flying in his direction and it would have hit him on the head had Harry not displayed his amazing Seeker skills and snapped it out of the air just in front of Ron's nose.

Draco was about to make some insulting remark, but the girl spoke out before he got the chance.

"That was my last orange," she said a bit regretfully searching through her bag. "But I do… aha! Have a lemon." And indeed she took one out of the bag and presented it as if it had been a priceless jewel or a handful of gold.

"You always have seemed to me as more of a lemon," she commented when he was staring at the lemon, too surprised to say a thing.

When nothing continued to be said, she turned her head again and nodded a greeting to Harry, Ron and Hermione. They returned it with three soft replies of "Hey, Luna!"

"You," said Luna, focusing now on Hermione and making her start, "are a coconut. Tough and hairy on the outside but delicious and pure on the inside. Only it takes a lot of trouble to reach the real you."

Hermione made a strange noise of surprise and irritation and was very glad when Luna's glance moved on to Ron.

"You," she continued, "are an apple. Quite common and not much of a deal, but one can always count on apples. First, I thought you a tomato – big and red and squashy, good to throw at people and makes excellent ketchup… but tomato unfortunately is a vegetable, not fruit."

Ron just stared at her, one half of him mad, another half embarrassed and the third half, despite the fact that it's hard to cut anything (or anyone) into three halves, amused.

"You can be an orange, Harry," she concluded. "Though I always like to think of you as a pineapple. Another kind of apple, on the wrong tree, though. It has a form, it has an appearance – it demands awe and respect. But in reality it's just another fruit, as delicate as any other once you get to its heart."

"But you," she turned back to Draco, "are most certainly a lemon. Catch!"

And with that she walked right past the four of them.

o.o.o

It was rolling down the hallway in the most determined manner until reaching the staircase and taking a momentary pause to think which way would be the best. Upon deciding that down was good enough it embarked on the journey of rolling and bouncing, bonk-bonk-bonk down the stairs. Now in the main hallway it looked around and peeked through the doors into the Great Hall – at the frightening sight of knives and forks it quickly turned around and raced in the opposite direction, taking downwards once again.

It was damp and dark in the dungeons with the burning lights more of a warning to keep away than to show the right path. It stopped in a random place by the wall and tried to be as invisible and unnoticeable as possible. Unfortunately, it was yellow. And sooner or later, or in this case somewhere in between, a hand would come swooping it up and murdering it in a cruel way.

"Care for a lemon, Drakey?" a high-pitched voice rang out reaching each corner and crack, however hard they had tried to hide themselves, and turning their essence into cheese.

"What?" an extremely annoyed tone answered. It wanted to make clear that now was not the time to mess with it and the best thing anyone could do was gasp and scurry away to hide in the shadows halfway round the world. But it was annoyed since it knew nothing of the kind would happen but quite the opposite; and it was right – the voice attacked again, only a bit softer this time, thank Goodness, though there was nothing soft about it. It was not razor-sharp either because razors, actually, weren't quite that sharp.

"Do you want a lemon?" the voice repeated its question.

Draco emerged from another room and stared at his wannabe girlfriend. The sight, he had to admit, was much pleasanter than the voice, and that was one of the reasons they never talked much with each other; the second was that they had little to say to one another – or, actually, Pansy had nothing to say he would want to listen to, especially when voiced by her. Yet, even the sight lost its glamour after facing it day after day after day after day after one day too many.

He glanced down at the little yellow fruit she was holding and something made a faint_ click_ in his brain as connections were formed, quite similarly to the moving stairs of the castle above.

Lemon.

Someone else had offered him a lemon – not too long ago. He reached into the depths of his mind and in a while surfaced with a handful of bottom-mud mixed with memories.

Who got mud on his memories?

Oh, of course, who else. And where was the little dirty bitch, there were also her bodyguards Potty and Weasel. Only this time there had been someone else – a weird girl with radish earrings who was throwing fruit at them. At him, that is. She had dared to throw fruit at _him_. Well, she was crazy of course, but no one should ever even think of daring to do something like that.

She had said she thought him a lemon. Well, the next time he saw her, he would better say what he thought of her. In a very insulting and threatening way, of course.

He made the decision and then brushed the stupid thought away from his ice-pure mind.

o.o.o

The opportunity presented itself the very next day, as they both left the Great Hall and set off over the lawn towards the greenhouses. She was walking alone, humming something, and looking as loony as ever, if not a bit more.

He sped up and upon reaching her, called out his opening statement.

"Hey, Loony, know what you are?"

She stopped at once, turned to him, and – believe it or not – smiled ever so sweetly.

"Yes, of course I do. How could I not?"

"What?" he exclaimed, surprised, then collected himself quickly and added, "… are you babbling about?"

"I know exactly what I am."

So perhaps he should have picked another introductory sentence – or left it out completely; even though any sane person would have understood the question a rhetorical one – ah! that had been his mistake – she was everything but sane. Must remember that for later. But now…

"So… what are you? Or, what do you think you are? A juicy bunch of grapes?"

He liked grapes. Especially when they were wine.

"No," she laughed as the possibility would have been absolutely absurd. It was, too, actually.

"No, I'm a beet. A white beet, that is."

"What?!" This time he was too surprised and confused to hide his surprise and confusion.

"A white beet. It's not really a fruit, but I am more into vegetable, crazy as it may sound. But do you know what's important about white beet?"

And that was not a rhetorical question either, Draco realized after half a minute of silence.

"No," he shook his head slowly, knowing he would damn himself in the future for not having added anything acid at all.

"You can make sugar out of white beet!"

Draco just stared this time.

"And sugar," Luna continued, slightly triumphantly, "with lemon… makes wonderful lemonade."


End file.
